Decolonizing the Mind: Summer School

The DTM Summer School is a project of the International Institute for Scientific Research (IISR) in The Hague, Netherlands. We acknowledge that knowledge is power and the manipulation of knowledge is the manipulation of power. In the last five hundred years western colonialism has built a system of knowledge production that succeeded in colonizing our mind. From the very beginning of colonialism every act of oppression was met with an act of resistance.

The attempt to colonize the mind was challenged by counter narratives from the resistance against colonialism. Colonialism is sometimes seen as a system that ended with political independence of the colonized countries. In our concept political independence was not the end of colonialism. We regard colonialism as a system of oppression and exploitation in five dimensions: geography, economics, social relations, political structures and culture (mental colonialism). That system did not end with political independence. We are still in the process of decolonizing our minds. The DTM Summer School is a contribution to this process. It brings together academics and activists who will engage in an intensive two-week interactive course of information, debate and discussion, analysis and the exchange of experiences in social struggle and the struggle to decolonize our minds. We are proud to be associated with the Summer Schools that Ramon Grosfoguel, a leading thinker on decoloniality, organizes in Granada and Barcelona. The Summer School in Granada is on Critical Muslims Studies and in Barcelona on Decolonizing Knowledge and Power. For more information on these Summer Schools, see www.globaldialogue.eduÂ

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